LEE COUNTY, Fla. — In April of 2021, the NCAA announced a change to their transfer portal rules.
Previously, college athletes that wanted to change schools would have to sit out a year before playing for their new team. However, that rule got repealed, leading to a plethora of athletes flooding the portal across all sports. With the higher amount of transfers and high school recruits all looking for spots, not everyone could find new homes.
The new transfer portal rules have led to a trickle-down effect that goes all the way from Division I to the junior college level. Now, former DI players are going to the JUCO route and landing in places like Florida Southwestern.
“The transfer portal is an interesting thing,” FSW Head Coach Zac Cole said.
That seems to be a lot of people’s opinions. Some people love the new rules, some people hate them, but a majority of people are in between. There are many pros and cons to the new landscape of college athletics.
The pros include FSW Baseball getting a lot more talent than before. The Buccaneers have 12 former Division I players on their roster this season.
“There’s a lot of good players at JUCO who I think could definitely play on a D1 roster right now,” current FSW outfielder and former Missouri transfer Derek Williams said.
Another benefit of the new rules is that athletes now have the ability to find a better fit for themselves and not be punished for it.
“You get to see people find places that they’re more comfortable,” current FSW outfielder and former Florida State transfer AJ Shaver said.
There are cons to the new transfer rules, however, and FSW is dealing with them. The most prominent is the constant roster turnover. Players are moving from school to school, so individuals have a hard time knowing where they land on a specific team at a given time.
“The playing time, you’re now competing against more than just the people that are there,” Shaver said.
In addition, the new rules have added more work to the coaches’ plates. Now, all college coaches from DI to JUCO have to know pretty much every name across the country. When you add that to the normal workload of high school recruiting, you can see how much more work the coaches are having to do.
No matter your thoughts on the new portal rules, they are impacting all college sports, especially locally with FSW Baseball.
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